


Though the Way is Clear

by FrostbitePanda



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Pregnancy, fluff-ish, lots of feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 07:07:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5958243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostbitePanda/pseuds/FrostbitePanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything dies and he was gone, she was sure of that.</p><p>(Max and Furiosa have to deal with something.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Though the Way is Clear

He knows before she does. 

They're caught in each other, biting, tasting. He blazes a searing trail with his mouth down her neck, over her clavicle, to her breast. She preferred his touch rougher, violence and napalm always simmering under her skin, ready to be ignited. He scrapes his teeth hard over her nipple, waiting for the clench of her fist in his hair, the desperate grinding of hips against his own. 

Instead he hears her hiss of air over closed teeth and her palms are pressing his head away from her. 

"Alright?" Even now, after hundreds of nights just like this one, her demons would still rush back to her, snatch her away from him as good as any car trap. He looks at her and her eyes are still closed and she palms the breast he had just bit. This wasn't the past come to shake her from her lust, it was _pain_. "Furiosa?" he says, breathless and worried, scooting up the bed and closer to her. 

"No..." she says as she shakes her head. "'s fine." She lays her nub on his neck, trying to reassure him. "That fucking _hurt_."

He mumbles an apology, though he can't help the confusion and apprehension that fills his chest. He did not do anything he hadn't done countless times before. He turns his gaze to her chest, still heaving with aborted desire. The sight would normally send him reeling, but something is very... different, he realizes now. He reaches a hand down to grasp one of her breasts, the weight and feel of which were now as familiar to him as his own gun. She emits a tiny moan, arching into his touch. 

He moves away, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, staring blankly at the floor as a static buzz of panic rises in his brain. 

"Hey..." He hears her say, soft and concerned from behind him. He feels the bed shift and her hand is sliding over his arm, her mouth pressing a kiss on his shoulder. "Max, I'm okay, really." 

"When was the last time you bled?" he asks abruptly, voice dark and quiet. 

He feels her weight leave him and she slumps away from him. She does not answer. 

He looks over his shoulder at her. "You were sick this morning." 

"Told you," she says, voice taking on an icy edge that he knew well. "Bad jerky."

He nods, sniffing and looking back to the floor, paralyzed. 

"I've always been irregular," she states in assured tones. 

"Lately?" he counters. He knows her so well, had comforted her enough times through her cycle to know better than to think that a missed one was something to brush off as nothing. 

She is stock-still and silent for a time and he watches as the color drains from her face, the tendons on her jaw jumping. She swallows and she looks as terrified as he feels. 

"Max--" 

"You told me you-- that you couldn't." He's shaking his head and he shouldn't be so angry, but it's boiling in his belly like a frothing caldera. "Would've never--"

"Max I _can't_ ," she protests, voice desperate and pleading, as if trying to convince herself as much as him. 

He lunges to his feet, unable to stay here any longer. Voices are bleeding into his head, leaving burning chemtrails over his eyes. He pulls his trousers on, his hands shaking so much that he doesn't even try to lace them up. He feels so fucking _foolish_... How could he do this? Be so fucking selfish? 

He's out the door and Furiosa doesn't say anything to him, does not call out to him or follow. He knew she wouldn't but still feels the sting that she doesn't.

He's in his car and flying through the sand within minutes.

+++ 

Vyrie confirmed it, the next morning, looking at her with something part unsure joy and part worry.

Furiosa sits on the examining table, hands curled over and white-knuckled on the edge. She stares, unseeing.

"Your man know?" 

She nods grimly, looks over to her. "Left last night." 

Vyrie licks her lips, looking uncertain, leans forward. "I have herbs you know. To make you bleed again. It'd be easy, how early you are."

Furiosa shakes her head. "Don't need him."

"Not saying that you did, just offering."

She had wept until she was raw and quaking the night before. Until her body simply gave up and shut itself down. She grieved for the life she had to leave behind, child or not. She grieved for the life where she had been lucky enough to have a person at her back, knowing her like she had never known herself, a touchstone, a _home,_. She grieved for her child, for the life it would lead-- or not. She grieved for her mother, for Valkyrie, for Angharad.

Everything dies and he was gone, she was sure of that.

She lifts her head, feeling the darkness rushing in with every breath. "Give me the herbs." 

+++ 

The bottle of herbs sits on her workbench, next to a gun disassembled and ready for cleaning. He had been working on it before he left. They both mocked her every morning, on her way to the wash room to wretch whatever was left in her belly.

And suddenly, he's there.

He stands in the doorway of their room-- only four days after he had left her. His hands worry at his belt and he shifts into the kerosene glow of her lamp like a wraith. His eyes move uneasily over the room, looking as burned and wasted as a dying cinder. 

The inventories for the next Bullet Farm trade lay forgotten in front of her and her hands are tight and damp on the bench. The lamp hisses long and dull in the immense silence.

He strides forward suddenly, after drinking her in with disbelieving eyes. A breath wheezes out of him, as if the act of walking pained him greatly. She steels herself in the face of his approach, ready to slap and spit and claw. He stops short of her, plucks the bottle of herbs from amongst the abandoned gun parts. He looks at it, eyes slanted and worried. "This what you want?" His voice grates like a rockfall in her ears. 

She suppresses a shiver, the muscles in her neck winding like chords on a harpoon gun. She says nothing-- can't possibly. 

He moves closer and she leans back, feet spreading beneath her, ready to spring up and knock his teeth out, coiling like a cobra. He stops, shifting back on his feet. He looks hurt, but understanding. He holds up the bottle, places it in front of her. "Whatever you do..." he trails off, coughing, throwing his shoulders up. "Ah... you have me. Mm... if you want." 

She can't speak. Her voice is lost and tangled up in the dark bramble that had grown like a weed in her chest since he had walked in. 

He gazes at her for a moment more and his eyes are bright and cold like a wasteland dawn and she has to look away in the face of it. He turns away after a time, sitting on the bed with a groan. He leans forward, arms on his knees and looks at her from across the room. "Had a kid once," he says slowly, swallowing hard, "strong. Healthy. Died anyway." 

She had known this about him, somehow. He was too gentle a creature, too caring and protective to be from this world where those things usually meant only pain and death. 

He clears his throat, scuffs a boot on the floor. "'M sorry." The words are scraping something black and bitter from him, spat like poison thorns at his feet. "Sat out there-- couldn't stop--" He looks back up at her and his expression breaks her open like a bad stitch. "All I do is run. Not good at... at staying. Mm… but can't stay away from here... can't." He's shaking his head, looking to the open door, his expression dark and heavy like tar, recalling old ghosts that she could not see and he could not attain. 

A small whine is kicking up in the back of his throat and he looks back at her. "Can't do-- without you." He shakes his head once, puts a palm on his thigh, brushes the other over his face. It's a smothering gesture-- for what she could not imagine. 

She is very still for a very long time. She knows just as well as he, that these words have cost him dearly. These words will leave him raw and open and ugly. He will need sewing up and cleaning before he is himself again, but he will always carry a scar within him for his trouble. 

She finally, finally stands. She knows he will make no move until she does. He's sitting on the bed, staring at the floor-- completely still for once. She walks to him and he does not look at her-- in a resolute sort of way, as if he is not allowed. She brushes fingers under his jaw, presses upwards and his face is turned up to her. He looks terrified. Terrified at the prospect that she may send him through that door to burn away in the wasteland sun. Terrified that there may be a child he will be charged with caring for if he stays here. Death lies on either track and he knows which one will shake his mind straight from its moorings. 

"I am so scared," she tells him because it's true. Because everything she has been feeling these four days is being reflected back to her through his face and it is ripping through her like a fresh bullet. Her tears come no matter her protest and they are hot and bright in her eyes. "Max I am so fucking scared." The sound of his name seems to jolt him out of a spell. He catches the hand at his jaw between both his own. Some of that fear filling his eyes is melting away. "But I've never been scared with you." She manages a smile at that. The man knelt in front of her had given her so much-- so fucking much-- for very little in return... this was the least she could do. He bows his head and she brushes fond lines over his scalp as she watches his shoulders sag. "Thank you, Max." 

The last time she had thanked him like this had been in the back of a pursuit vehicle with a pint or more of his blood in her veins and a hole in her side. She had known then, just as she knew now, that they were as inextricable as an engine and transmission-- cylinder and piston-- and nothing could knock them loose. 

He breathes and she feels his arms twitch at his sides, desperate for grounding, that assuredness of her body. She steps closer to him, pushing herself within the bracket of his thighs and he finally brings her to him, face pushed to her belly and arms twined around her waist. 

"We--" he starts, turning his head and placing a firm kiss on her stomach, "be okay." 

She smiles-- damnit-- big and broad and it _hurts_ but she can't help it and she pulls on the hair at the back of his head before she crashes her mouth down on his own and _fuck_ she missed him.

+++ 

_And what do you remember most?_  
The line of the sea, seceding the coast?  
Fine capillaries, glowing with cars?  
The comfort you drew from the light of the stars? 

_And how long did you climb that night,_  
with the ice in your lungs, on the rungs of the light?  
Beyond recall, you severed all strings  
to everyone, and everything. 

_Oh, silent, constant driver of mine:_  
wordlessly calling from the end of the line,  
where, even though each hour I ever loved  
must queue and dive,  
still, you will not take my heart, alive.  
\-- _You Will Not Take My Heart Alive_ Joanna Newsom

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this post.](http://youkaiyume.tumblr.com/post/137192836593/okay-but-imagine-this-max-realizes-furiosa-is) I think I may continue this, but I'm not sure. 
> 
> Btw, a lot of people don't know this, but I am [freshhexes](Http://Freshhexes.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


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